Friendship Takes Showing Up

Today I felt very off. You know what I mean. I wasn’t sick, nothing too terrible was going on, I couldn’t put my finger on it; I just wasn’t in sync with the world around me. Have you ever felt like that? I stayed in bed watching T.V., read some articles, played a few iPad games, & answered phone calls. When I finally left my bedroom to head toward the kitchen it was almost 5:00 p.m.

After I fed the cats and myself I sat down to look over the mail; both snail and email. I’ve been taking my email to zero twice a day, morning & before bed. This has really makes me feel like I accomplished something every day.

In my manually delivered mail I got a book I’ve been waiting on. “We Saved You a Seat: Finding and Keeping Lasting Friendships” by Lisa-Jo Baker. I should’ve began an online women’s Bible study on Friendships today, but I totally forgot. Thankfully I could watch the video for week 1 and begin the workbook. The video was like peeking into the relationships of five women and using their stories & discussions to think about friendships in my life.

This week the topic of the video and discussion was: Friendship Takes Showing Up. Watching the video and working through some of the workbook pages made me think about how different friendships were when I was a kid compared to now. As a kid, all you had to do was “show up.” No one needed to call or make plans. You showed up, got on your bikes and went. We had about a one-mile radius of friends to just pop in on & hang out. We had woods to play in, neighborhood streets to ride bikes on, and there were always houses with basketball hoops. We were usually out & about every day!

Now everyone has grown up and the way we behave in our friendships has changed. As adults, we have a wide variety of daily plans that keep us from just “showing up” at a friend’s house. In fact, most of the time people don’t appreciate it when someone just happens to stop by without making plans first. We don’t want to interrupt someone’s plans, show up when not expected, or travel to visit only to find that friend isn’t even there. Sometimes just “showing up” isn’t possible.

My question is this, does showing up must mean physically showing up? Can good friends show up with a phone call, a Face Book message, Skype a conversation, or a detailed text inquiring about your health & wellbeing? Sometimes it’s just not possible to be with some friends every day. Showing up could be a text saying, “I love you, I miss you, I’ve been thinking about you, or I said a prayer for you today.”